What cricket taught us in 2012

It's been a busy cricket year. It usually is, especially if you play in the Indian cricket team — where this time things haven't gone from good to better... in fact they've gone from bad to worse.

Even though Test cricket lost some sheen with Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Ricky Ponting walking away from the game, it seems to have become more exciting — with 31 results in 39 matches played so far.

Cricket expert Ayaz Memon concurs: "Test cricket has never been better. Now we need to cleverly back this up with viewership, TV rights and the commerce part of the game. We can also start thinking about a Test championship."

India have struggled this year. PTI

The ICC does have plans to start a World Test championship but because of contractual obligations with it's broadcaster, those plans have been pushed back to at least 2017.

With three formats being played throughout the year, it has also become tougher for cricketers to adapt their techniques to each format over the course of a series. These days series start off with Test matches, then move into ODIs with a couple of T20s squeezed in between. Teams have also adapted by picking different players for different formats, as specialisation has set in.

This has also led to a more competitive battle for top spot in the formats. Even though South Africa have stood out as the team to beat, Australia and England haven't been far behind and West Indies showed their mettle by winning the ICC World T20 championship.

New players have come in, old players have walked off and some players like Michael Clarke, Vernon Philander and Virat Kohli have had a breakthrough year.

Watch the video to know the five lessons Ayaz Memon learnt from this year's cricket.